In recent years, as mobile terminals such as a mobile phone, models equipped with high-accuracy cameras have been popularized, and applications and services which use the cameras have been increased. For example, a new form of navigation system which displays, on a screen displaying in real time a video image taken by a camera, the name of and detailed information regarding a building seen in the screen, detailed information and campaign information regarding an advertisement on a billboard seen in the screen, and the like, in such a manner that these items of information are superimposed on the images of the respective objects, has been attracting attention. A technology to realize such a new form of navigation system is called augmented reality (AR).
Meanwhile, in light of improvement of safety and speedup, a communication technology using optical wireless communication has been attracting attention.
In the communication technology using optical wireless communication, information can be transmitted directly from an installation position, and a relative position of the transmission source can relatively easily be identified. Thus, the communication technology is useful for realizing the above new form of navigation system.
Here, a new form of navigation system using optical wireless communication is disclosed in Patent Literature 1. In Patent Literature 1, an information processing apparatus such as a mobile phone performs position measurement by means of a GPS and transmits position information and search conditions to a server. The server instructs a light-emitting device that corresponds to the received position information and search conditions, to emit light on which data is superimposed. The information processing apparatus detects the light-emitting device that emits the light in a predetermined blinking pattern, from an image of an object to decode and obtain the data, and displays the obtained data on the image of the object such that the data corresponds to the position of the light-emitting device.
Further, the optical wireless communication has a problem that communication cannot be performed at all when a small obstacle is merely present on a straight line connecting the transmission side to the reception side.
In Patent Literature 1, when the light-emitting device that corresponds to the position information and the search conditions is blocked and the information processing apparatus cannot obtain data therefrom, the data is transmitted to unblocked another light-emitting device via the server, and the information processing apparatus obtains the data of the blocked light-emitting device from the other light-emitting device. In this manner, the above problem is solved.